there is a wall at the universe
where shit heads graffiti their names on the side
street kids hide little bags of drugs behind the bricks
and you and i just sat there
our backs pressed against it

“what’s beyond that wall?”
you asked me
and i told you
“that’s the whole thing.
it’s the wall at the end of the universe.
there is nothing beyond it.”

“nothing is something.”
you said.
i wanted to kiss you.
you were wearing that lipgloss
that tasted like cherries
or strawberries
or some delicious fruit
and when my lips are done
sliding off the synthetic taste
all i’m left with is you.

you and me.
sitting against the wall
at the end of the universe.
the one that doctor gonzo
drove his great shark over.
the one that syd barrett
crashed into
like the comedown
from the astral plane.
this is where we are.

“have you ever wanted
to look over the wall?”
you asked.
“hell no,” i said.
“that’s just

that’s just too much for me.”
“how can you not want to look?”
“to be honest,”
i said,
“i’m slightly disinterested.”

“i’m going to look.”
you said,
and i thought that too
was an honorable choice
so i lifted you up onto my shoulders
and you looked out
into the great beyond
where i imagine
there are no red planets
or white giants
or starbucks across the street from
starbucks
and i asked you what you could see
and you said

“i don’t know how to describe it.”
and i said
“well try…”
and you said
“i can’t even really see anything
i just feel
deep inside of me
this haunting faith
that there is something beyond
this wall.”

“who made this wall?”
i asked
and you said
you didn’t know
and you came back down
from off my shoulders
and you looked into my eyes
and you said
“huh…”
and i said
“what…”
and you said
“nothing.”

there was a pause.
the crickets held their bows
and waited for our cue
to continue.

“i’m gonna throw a brick
over the wall!”
i said.
and you said
“you are such a guy.”
and i said

“i have to know.
i have to know if i can
break down the walls of perception.
what if someone
just put this wall up
to make themselves feel better?
maybe they were afraid of
infinity?”

“afraid of infinity?
do you know how you sound?”

“i’m serious!”
i said.
“why else do we build walls?
because we’re afraid of
not understanding
what is on the other side.”

“what is more romantic
than the idea
that everything continues
forever,”

“i’ll tell you what,”
you said,
“the idea
that you and i
on some cold colorado night
could pack a picnic
and go sit
at the wall at the end of the universe
and accept that we did it.
that together, we made it.
we all want to be pioneers.
we all want to feel that what we found
is the ultimate.
we are nationalistic
to the nation of ourselves
and our loved ones.
that is why we are here.
that is why you and i ended up here
at the wall at the end of the world
so we could pretend our love
is romeo and juliet
that our love
is the love story that they will tell
to our children
and our children’s children.
that our love
is the ultimate.
that is why we build walls.
windows and doors and walls
these are things we’ve created
because it is part
of our idea of home.”

“i don’t need walls
to feel like i’m home with
you.” i said.
and your eyes glimmered
and i saw in them
what i think you must have seen
when you looked over
the wall
at the end
of the universe.

you’re off in japan
with the giant cartoons and constant workflow
lost in the hustle and bustle of lines and railways
clinking bells and chaos noise symphonic

you’re off in san francisco
in a slanted city dizzy from the bicycles
burning through the silly traffic
stuck beside the bay
in a tower in chinatown where you drink
mai tais and study the gentrification of
dust below

you’re off in south south america
dancing on the edge of cape horn
hand in hand with a lover
your mind partially above frozen water
but so much more of your epileptic majesty
buried beneath
your hands reach for the south pole
as mine just reach out for you

you are lost amongst the redwoods
mourning the coming death of your loved one
you sit naked beside giants and you paint
with your fingers on the canvas in your lap
the trees don’t end until they get to heaven
you share the trees with heaven

you, stranger, are stuck in the madness of bangkok
the banging of pots and pans
guns, girls and ganja
massive heart attack motorcycle smog lady boy
mad mad madness
in transit from the sanity in your head
homeless and happy and we were so close to something

you are off in the void
the space between nothing and everything
the space between death and faith
fistful of pills
skull cracked against the bathroom tile
your book is still in the back of my car
we never finished our poem

you are out in the ether of the cosmos
you are dancing on trains with strange strangers
and cursing the dice that don’t roll sevens
it’s half past nine and you’re half past eleven
it’s pointless to try to write you

you are off somewhere strange
but you are still adamantly here in my heart
in my chest
in arapahoe county, colorado

First off, thank you all so much for your support of 02.2013. In my opinion, it was a great success. It was very interesting forcing myself to write something each day, and doing something I really like to, which is trying to widen the spectrum of my poems as much as possible.

Now, I’m beginning work on a new project, which I’m going to give a working title of ANT Magazine, until I have an official title.

I am looking for motivated to people to work for this blog and I am looking for a wide variety of things.

I have decided to drive this blog/ online magazine from the idea that bloggers can post what they want/ when they want. I want my bloggers to have the freedom to do as they please, because I want them to have fun, and in turn, for the blog to be fun. Thus far, I have a couple poets signed on, photographers, artists, and even a pair of guys who are going to write about bad b-movies. Here’s some ideas of what else I’d be looking for.

Artists (I don’t care if you make GIFs,or intricate water paintings or digital art, I could be looking for what you have. I’d really even like to have a talented doodler.)

Alt Lit People (If you don’t know what alt lit is, this one doesn’t apply to you. If you do, I want your poetry, I want your memes, I want your short stories.)

Film (I am really looking for good youtubers to post videos to the site. Once again, open-minded to what you got. I would love some funny videos.)

Photographers (I would love photographers whose pieces stand alone and I would also love photographers who if I said “take me pictures related to “night” or “fourth of July” could deliver them in about a week. Experience does not matter. Talent and motivation do.

I would really like to have someone to write on feminism on the blog, as this is a topic that is very important to me.

Anything else. If you hula hoop, and want to post instructional hula hoop videos, I’d like you to apply. If you sing and play guitar, send me your videos. If you are a badass list maker or nutritionist or tech geek, I’d like you to apply.

IMPORTANT NOTE! You do not have to be American. I want this blog to have a global community and other cultures and countries are not only requested to apply, but I insist they do. I do have to ask that you can write English though. I’m sorry.

Most of all, I want people sharing their passions. I’m trying to make a community out of this. I want my bloggers interacting with our readers. I want people to have a reason to come back, and I want this to be a blog about sharing with the world, not making money. (haha… blogs making money.)

If you are interested, please send me something about yourself and an example of what you have to offer to bricemaiurro@gmail.com.

there’s a dead deer on the highway of our love
there’s a man in a business suit pretending to be me
there’s a goldfish that lives in my water bottle
there’s a music box ballerina that lives in my glove compartment
there’s daggers falling from the ceiling
and i’m a six year old thinking i can save my self
by hiding underneath my teenage mutant ninja turtle blanket
there’s no room for your family in the lifeboat of our trust

there’s a fly stuck in my skull
and he is driving me up the fucking wall
he is buzzing and buzzing and every hour
i am that much more tempted to just crack my head open
and let the mother fucker out
there are no presidents in narnia or wonderland or heaven
or hell or the matrix inside of my skull
just this god damn fly who is still buzzing
you sound like a mother
do you know that fly?
you keep nagging like a mother
there’s an escaped insane asylum inmate driving the bus
and we’re all going wherever his fancy takes us

there’s ten thumbs where i should have fingers
there’s two left feet where i should have a right one
there’s devils doing angel dust in casino bathrooms
there’s a train station in my heart that’s been closed
for a long, long time and high school kids just sneak there
on friday and saturday nights to get high and make out
there’s crocodiles in the sewer of my bloodstream

nothing is pretty right now and nothing is disney
nothing is saturday morning cartoons
nothing is mister roger’s neighborhood
nothing is monday through friday, nine a.m. to five p.m.
nothing is candygram
nothing is dinner with the family
american steak and american potatoes and coca cola
but not for the kids because no caffeine this late
nothing is that
it’s just a mess up there in my head right now
kurt vonnegut breakfast of champions schizo hodgepodge
there’s some godless hippy waiving an anti-this sign
and he has a point but he hasn’t filled the hole he’s dug
he’s ran onto the stage of my skull
and disbanded the magic trick
but he didn’t put anything in its place
he’s just standing there
like a frickin crack addict on stage
smiling like a moron at the audience
now he’s dancing like the w.b. frog

hello my baby
hello my darling
hello my ragtime gal

goodbye nightmare
hello dream

there’s spare change rattling around my stomach
there’s a faceless image of god on the skin of my eyes
and the television is the best listener i’ve run into
except you, you never seem to say much either

atrophy, apathy and the letters between lovers
disect your very core to try and find the blind
the walk of shame through the halls of college dorms
the parasail that treads too close to water
let’s unshelter the shelters, let’s unveil the mask of sanity
let the world see our naked scarred unshaven selves
we will sit elevated in a glass box above times square
and frozen in time we will move as fast as traffic
if life is a graph of time versus love versus change
what would happen if you crumpled up the sheet of paper
the equation was written on?

condense your density. make true your individual rhythm.
martyr your dark dark dark dark dark heart
and allow yourself to become as soft as soft symphony
cram your head full of knowledge then let it all go
binge and purge. create then destroy. love then let love.
you have a finite amount of infinite to give the infinite.
your hourglass figure can only be flipped so many times
requiem. become requiem. become undeniable. stand
on the pedestal that you have created
from cracks in the sidewalk you stepped on
when you break your mothers back consider the fact
that maybe you adjusted the lump in her spine
close your history books and listen to the eyes of auschwitz
the scars of pearl harbor, the radiation of hiroshima
take a shot of nagasaki and chase it with karoshi
we’re all melting like the wicked witch of the west
we are all bleeding like the eternal tsunami of the east
our stripy socks shrivel up beneath the house hovering over our heads

we rob peter to pay paul and then we use paul’s money
to take peter’s girl out for a night on the town
but she never calls because she’s in love with paul
and we ignore the fall, the mighty fall of the american empire
and the fire, it burns us all the same, we have only ourselves
and a thousand past lives left to blame, we’re so brash
do not ask what you can do for your country
once we see the fire it burns us all the same, we’re so brash
ash to ash, dust to dust, from first to last lashes
ashes to ashes
we
all
fall
down

“Don’t you just love it?” she said. “Every day you stand on top of a mountain, make a three-hundred-sixty degree sweep, checking to see if there’s any fires. And that’s it. You’re done for the day. The rest of the time you can read, write, whatever you want. At night scruffy bears hang around your cabin. That’s the life! Compare with that, studying literature in college is like chomping down on the bitter end of a cucumber.”

“OK,” I said, “but someday you’ll have to come down off the mountain.””

-Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

(the mountain.)

and the wind picked me up
wrapped me in its rope
and tied me mad to the front of a ship
the water billowed below me
as i set sail alone
off to an island
where no man had ever been before

and there on the island
was a mountain
and on the mountain
a cabin where i could be
alone
solitary
no stranger
familiar or otherwise
knocking at the door
no brick of reality
crashing through the window

do you know how brash
a fireplace crackles
when you built it yourself
and there is no sound of traffic
to spoil it?
when there is only the sound of stars
a sound like

that.

to breathe air
untainted by the mouths of others
to make a bed
from the flotsam and jetsam
inside of your head
to walk around inside your own skull
hang your own artwork
unbalanced upon your medulla oblongota
to lean a chair upon the door
of the cerebrum
so no one can get in

to padlock and chain
the cerebellum

to make time like soup
throwing in what you will
two parts nonsense
to twelve parts inspiration
three tablespoons of nap
bring to a boil
let cool
and enjoy
serves one

to love the person
who knows you best
to mark the walls with crayons
the color of your insecurities
the shade of your denials
to explore the entire fucking spectrum
of your color wheel

and to sleep
when you are ready to sleep
to wake up
to the visceral, visceral
raw dog honest momentarily existent
then gone but always visceral
alarm clock in your stomach

and one day
there will be a knock at your cabin door
the sun will seem artificial
and you will not recognize the voice
of another
as something outside of yourself
but they will come
the authorities of reminder
the karma police
if you do not return their calls
they will mail you letters
and if you burn their letters
they will send a warrant for your arrest

you will be reinstated
brought back to the intercourse
of other people
whether it be with joy
or kicking and screaming
you do not own this planet
you should be so lucky to think
that you alone
deserve your life
there are lonely househusbands
an audience of towns
maybe the ear
receptive to the voice of the world
waiting for you

the waves crashed different
when the island learned
it was a peninsula
but fire came along
and the people formed circles
they danced
they hit their drums with love
they hit their drums with love
and the beat alters hearts
and you threw into the fire
your cabin
on top of a mountain
on an island
far from home
and watched as the smoke rised
into the cosmos
to form purple nebulas
and ancient songs
that filter down
to typewriters
and deep
deep deep down
into the soil
beneath the mountain

I’m late again. I know. I’m a terrible person. We’ve had nothing but horrendous computer problems at home so I’m at the library now typing my 02.06 poem…

(kingdom.)

they kept the stones stacked properly
replaced any cracks with newer stronger ones
the moat was only dug deeper
and the ropes of the drawbridge
were always taught
unfrayed and prepared to open their door
to visitors

the prince and his sister, the princess
played together in their room
away from echoing yells down corridors
distorted and unfamiliar to innocent ears

the walls grew taller each day
the halls were repainted
and the flowers well-mended
the windows overlooked the mountains
massive and unflinching
but they crumbled each day
small bits of rock rolling into river

the king dressed regally
his gold polished his robes as neat
as the careful steps he took
through the palace alone
the queen was gorgeous
she grew older as do we all
but she grew better
her dresses flowed beautifully
she carried herself with the stature
of some great bird

and the king and the queen danced
in the ballroom alone
to the sound of the gramaphone
red curtains and waltzes
they danced til they were done

and when they were done
they looked at each other
dead in the eyes
and said i love you
and it was the last time they ever would

the castle was up-kept as well as it could be
no detail went un-missed
no imperfection went uncorrected
but sometimes decay just happens
from the inside out

nothing could save the kingdom
the empire of their love had simply vanished
a silent foreign enemy come in the night
stole the love they harvested like gold straw
the castle was hollow now
and the king and the queen
just the pages of a fairy tale

they closed the book
looked up from the pages
and had to find where they were
without the love
they thought they were promised forever